• Mike Teasdale, Creative Partner, Harvest Digital
• Katja Henneveld, Account Director, AtlasDMT
• Alexis Sitaropoulos, Marketing Manager, Espotting
• Leah Stitson, Client Sevice Director, Overture

Pay-per-click (PPC), or paid search, is the fastest growing form of online advertising.

This evening event will go 'beyond the basics' of search marketing and looking at what businesses should be doing to maximise the impact of what is becoming an extremely important channel.

You'll see three short and complementary sessions:

The Agency View

Harvest Digital will be looking at how search fits into an integrated online marketing schedule, focusing on areas like creative, keyword selection and bidding strategy. They'll also be discussing what happens when everyone is bidding for the same keywords and costs go sky high.

The Network View

Speakers from two of the big networks operating in the UK, Overture and Espotting, will give their views on how they see the market developing, particularly in light of Google's much heralded IPO later this year. They'll also provide case studies detailing how to optimise your campaigns for the best results, and answer your specific questions.

The Asp View

What about automating your search marketing and paid-search campaigns? Go Toast is an automated bidding service designed to take care of keyword bidding for you, and parent company Atlas DMT will be on hand to explain how this and other tools can help you to improve the performance of your campaigns.

The presentations will be followed by a panel discussion and questions from the audience, after which drinks will be served at a networking reception.

Speakers

• Mike Teasdale, Creative Partner, Harvest Digital www.harvestdigital.com
• Katja Henneveld, Account Director, AtlasDMT www.atlasdmt.com
• Alexis Sitaropoulos, Marketing Manager, Espotting www.espotting.com
• Leah Stitson, Client Sevice Director, Overture www.overture.com

Profiles

Mike Teasdale, Creative Partner, Harvest Digital (www.harvestdigital.com)
Mike Teasdale is Creative Partner at Harvest Digital, a specialist online marketing agency. Harvest Digital helps clients to exploit online marketing opportunities, including email, online advertising, search engine optimisation, microsites and tracking/reporting. Current clients include Tesco Personal Finance, Monster, Norwich Union and the BBC World Service. As Creative Partner, Mike is responsible for all aspects of the creative product including copy, design and overall creative strategy. Before Harvest Digital, he worked as a consultant with Answerthink (www.answerthink.com), where he developed online marketing strategy for clients like IBM Global Services, Shell and Abbey National. He started his career as a copywriter in the direct marketing industry, winning numerous creative awards with WWAV Rapp Collins. In 1995 he co-founded one of the first new media agencies in London, Tequila Digital where he developed web projects for Motorola, Michelin, IBM, the BBC and many others. Mike makes regular contributions to Internet publications and industry groups. He has a BA and MA in English Literature from Leeds University and is a visiting lecturer at the University of Westminster.

Katja Henneveld, Account Director, AtlasDMT (www.atlasdmt.com)
Katja is responsible for the European launch of Atlas's search engine bid management tool Go Toast as well as the European Business Development for AtlasDMT. Katja moved to Atlas at the beginning of 2004 after having worked for technology company Bluestreak and as Business Development Director at sales agency ad 2-one for almost 3 years. Before her move to the UK Katja worked for Dutch advertising data company BBC as Product Manager. AtlasDMT provides advertisers and agencies with an all-round tracking and reporting tool that also offers planning, buying and trafficking features. Go Toast, Atlas DMT's Bid-management and optimisation tool was added to the product portfolio in March. Clients include Agency Republic, Carat, Harvest Digital and Starcom Digital.

Alexis Sitaropoulos, Marketing Manager, Espotting (www.espotting.com)
Espotting is one of Europe�s leading paid-for listings providers. Espotting operates an online marketplace where advertisers bid against each other for prominence within paid-for listings that Espotting delivers. As Marketing Manager, Alexis has been instrumental in building one of the most respected and widely recognised brands in the online B2B industry. Espotting�s growth has been explosive - Alexis has driven advertiser acquisition, helping grow Espotting�s advertiser base to over 22,700, including names such as British Airways, eBay, Norwich Union Direct and Lastminute.com. In addition, he has taken a leading role in educating the market about an advertising that did not exist 4 years ago, but today accounts for 36% of internet advertising spend. Prior to Espotting, Alexis was marketing manager for recruitment portal jobs.co.uk (now part of the Pertemps group), tasked with brand building and advertiser acquisition initiatives, as well as launching a number of new advertising products and services. Alexis also spent 3 years as associate marketing manager with Australian hardware and network solutions provider Microbyte, where he grew their customer base from nothing to over 1,200.

Leah Stitson, Director of Client Services, Overture UK (www.overture.com)
As Director of Client Services, Leah has overall responsibility for Overture�s direct, agency and Search Engine Marketer (SEM) channels. Overseeing the UK account management team, Leah ensures clients are able to get the best return on investment for their Overture campaigns, and ensures implementation of the right tools, products and practices to deliver as high a standard of customer service possible. Through the sharing of best practice and market experience, Leah was a key force behind market launches throughout Europe, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands and Scandinavia. An authority within the online industry, Leah previously held the position of sales manager at Inceptor, a provider of online marketing solutions that include search engine marketing, tracking, bid management and email marketing. Overture�s search-based products and tools help businesses connect with highly motivated customers online. Potential customers can be reached at the very time they are searching for your business with Overture�s core product, Precision Match - it allows you to bid for placement in search results on relevant terms to your business, only paying when a consumer clicks through to your site.

Further Info

PPC enables the smallest of businesses to advertise online, while at the same time delivering impressive levels of ROI for large clients such as BT, Dell and Opodo.

In 2003, paid-for search listings accounted for 36% of the UK online advertising market (second only to banner advertising), according to research by the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Last year, Google's advertising revenue from pay-per-click was just under 962 million USD (source WARC). Google's IPO, Yahoo!'s acquisition of Overture & Inktomi, and MSN's much-talked-about plans to introduce new search services have all focused attention on the benefits of paid search.